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BRITISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP


July 15, 2004


Carl Pettersson


ROYAL TROON, SCOTLAND

STEWART McDOUGALL: Ladies and gentlemen, Carl Pettersson, 3-under par 68, and joint leader in the clubhouse. Carl, nice start. You'll be happy with that, obviously.

CARL PETTERSSON: Oh, I'm excited.

STEWART McDOUGALL: Were conditions quite easy? Were you looking for a low score on that?

CARL PETTERSSON: I wasn't really thinking about a score. I saw there was no wind when we teed off and I knew I had to shoot fairly low on the front nine. I knew the wind was going to get up on the back nine. I didn't think about the score. I wanted to go out and hit good shots.

Q. Was that only on the first tee you knew there was a change of playing partner? How did that all happen?

CARL PETTERSSON: Actually, me and my caddy realized about 30 minutes before the tee time we hadn't seen David Duval. And I realized then that he might not show up. But I enjoyed my day with David Griffiths, I think, he was a nice young man and played pretty good.

Q. Not the first time you've been at the top of the leaderboard at The Open?

CARL PETTERSSON: I've only played at two British Opens, and I like the first day. I did pretty good at Muirfield and I hope I can improve on that.

Q. Are you really playing well?

CARL PETTERSSON: Yeah, I finished 7th two weeks ago last time I played in America at the Western Open. And I played really well there, just made a couple of stupid mistakes. Links golf is a little different. You can actually play fairly well sometimes and not get anything out of it. But I wouldn't say I hit the ball superb, but I hit it good enough to get a good number.

Q. You seemed to struggle a bit on the back nine. Was it because of the wind or because you hit the ball?

CARL PETTERSSON: It was because of the wind. The front nine we didn't have much wind. Then the beginning of the back nine, every hole was into and off to the left or left-to-right, which is not my favorite wind to play. And it took some time to adjust. And I hit poor tee shots on the front of the back nine, but I managed to hit it good on the way in, which was nice. It took a bit of adjusting.

Q. I presume, Carl, you heard about Jesper and Luke rejoining the European Tour to make it manageable. Did that put you into a rethink, and what was the situation there?

CARL PETTERSSON: Yeah, I never really thought about it that much. Obviously I wanted to play the Ryder Cup, but maybe now I should have rejoined. I'm actually trying for an invite spot next week at the Irish Open, which I will know hopefully shortly. And I'm going to play -- if I play in the Irish I'm going to play in the Scandinavian. My wife's pregnant, 7 months pregnant at the moment, after the Scandinavian I need to get back home, I think.

Q. You said you might rejoin?

CARL PETTERSSON: Well, there's every chance, yeah, but I'm not sure how the full story works there. I get confused every week, they change the rules (laughter).

Q. Troon has a very special place --

CARL PETTERSSON: Exactly. This is where I started to play golf. My parents took me here for the Senior British Open, I guess, in -- I don't know what year it was, but it's when I first started getting interested in it.

Q. How old were you then?

CARL PETTERSSON: I'm not sure what year it was, early '90s. I was probably 12 years old or something.

Q. What memories do you have of it?

CARL PETTERSSON: I didn't even recognize the place when I came on Monday. It's been a bit of a rough ride since then.

STEWART McDOUGALL: Thank you.

End of FastScripts.
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